100 million Facebook users who need productivity training

Submitted by stepfact on Fri, 2010/09/24 - 10:27

There must be at least 100 million people whose productivity is severely down due to Facebook. A whole group of students will get lower grades and their future is at stake. Many business professionals are lowering their productivity and put their future at stake as well. This is causing a division in society between those who can handle the distraction and those who can’t.

There are 500 million Facebook users. The average Facebook user spends more than 45 minutes per day on Facebook. That is the average. How much would this be for the 20% heavy users if you apply this standard rule of wisdom that 20% of something is responsible for 80% of the results? Could it be that 100 million Facebook users spend on average more than 3 hours per day on Facebook?

OK, these figures are not based on any detailed study or analysis. But they originate from looking with common sense at a set of staggering numbers.

These more than 3 hours per day have to come from somewhere. I do not believe that they are just spent during the after-study / after-work evening hours. Look around. You see students and workers using many hours per day their PC or laptop. Do you really think that they just do work and are not distracted by all friend requests, messages, event invitations, wall postings and etcetera?

Distractions

Most people have already enormous difficulties to avoid distraction by their email. As soon that email icon pops up and they here the ping, they stop what they are doing, move to their Outlook or web-based email page, read the email and sometimes respond. After that they could continue what they were doing.

Most of us know how much extra time it takes to stop something, focus on something else and then try to get the first activity going again. It is like this when you have to change a production line from one product to another. It is like this when you as a person have to switch from one task to another. It takes some much of your time.

For sure there are lots of people who can handle the distractions from Facebook and email. I am not worried about those. But there are still probably 100 million or more who can’t. Their 3 hours are not spent in a burst of productivity on business contacts or learning topics. Time spent does not equally time lost, but for this group that could well be.

Our social media age can bring us many benefits and can enable us to learn, share and teach while enjoying it as well. But there could be more than 100 million people out there who could use some help in making sure that they grasp this opportunity without the loss of their valuable hours: the only currency that you can never earn back what you lose it.